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Technical Services is responsible for developing and maintaining Dartmouth's e-mail infrastructure.
The principal server-side components of the e-mail system are mailhubs and mailbox servers. The mailhubs are responsible for processing inbound and outbound messages, checking for spam and viruses. Messages containing known viruses are blocked; spam messages are tagged by the mailhubs, allowing the mailbox servers to deliver the spam messages to a separate Spam folder in the recipient's mailbox. This "tag and deliver" system avoids the need for users to learn a separate interface to check their Spam folder. We use SpamAssassin for spam checking, and ClamAV and Sophos for virus detection. We also subscribe to several real-time blacklist services (that list known spam sources by IP address).
The mailbox servers (named for Santa's reindeer) store mail messages centrally; they support access by POP3, IMAP, and BlitzMail clients. For BlitzMail clients, the server also provides central storage of personal mailing lists and account settings, so the same lists and settings are available from any computer.
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